BYU

Honorable Enforcement

With the creation of the @honorcodestories Instagram account, there has been a ton of talk around the honor code office of Brigham Young University (BYU). In the last 72 hours or so the account has surged from 80 followers to over 12,000 (15,000 at the time of posting) and the owner of the account has been interviewed by a number of news channels and is preparing to give interviews for newspapers including at least 2 out of state papers. Suffice to say it’s quickly grown into quite the topic of discussion here in Provo and may become a talking point to even larger audiences as the week continues. I obviously want to get my two cents in because I’m just an opinionated punk who can’t help himself. It’s also something that I feel very strongly about.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the ins and outs of the honor code. You can read it for yourself here if you’re curious. All I’ll say is that most of it is already in line with teachings and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and with the vast majority of students at BYU being members so most of that stuff shouldn’t be all that controversial. I don’t have a real problem with the honor code itself, if it were up to me I’d tweak a few things but nothing major. My beef is with how the honor code is enforced and the office that does that enforcing. So let’s remember that going forward. Honor code? weird but OK. Honor code office? Terrible and in desperate need of change.

Let’s also get something clear, one of the central ideas, in fact, the central idea of The Church is that Jesus Christ suffered in Gethsemane and died on Calvary so he could atone for the sins of humanity. This means that we can all repent of sin and be forgiven. Forgiveness and mercy are what’s emphasized in Church teaching. It should follow then that an institution like BYU and its enforcement of their honor code should emphasize forgiveness and mercy, but forgiveness and mercy are not what is emphasized by the honor code office. The honor code office is one that seeks to mete out punishment and what they view as justice at every opportunity. It is not a place where merciful solutions are sought out. This massive difference in approach is at the core with my problem with the honor code office. Nothing about what I’m reading feels like they have any love for the students they’re supposed to be helping.

I should also mention that I have no personal history with the honor code office. I’ve never been asked to come in. No punishment has been given to me or anything like that. I’ve been somewhat aware of the absurdities of the honor code office, but never in a direct way. It was just this week where I started to learn more about the specifics and these stories are what’s really got my stomach turning.

One thing about the honor code office that honestly just boggles my mind are the stories of students who have done things before they attended BYU (and therefore before they signed the honor code) that would be considered against the honor code and the punishments handed out for such actions. We all get why this is backwards right? How it’s totally unfair to punish someone for doing something BEFORE they agreed not to do it? Right? So we can all agree that’s messed up.

Another frightening practice I see in these stories that very much bothers me is how honor code office will call mental health clinics and demand confidential information about students who have used their services.

That is beyond a yikes from me. It’s disgusting.

It’s just a horrible thing to try and violate the confidentiality of a patient and their therapist. For some students, their therapist may be the only person they feel like they can trust with this sensitive information regarding deeply personal and potentially traumatic events in their lives and the expectation of confidentiality is one of the things that can help these students feel comfortable enough to talk about their traumas and begin to work through them and heal. I can’t imagine how much of a setback it could be for someone working through trauma to not only find out your therapist gave away your secret but you now have the added stress that you may be kicked out of university for trusting a therapist. Not OK.

Then there’s the difference in enforcement by the honor code office between women and men. A horrific theme that emerges is of women who get assaulted by their boyfriends or guys they’re on a date with. They (The women) then report themselves to the honor code office and are punished whilst the men get off Scot-free or perhaps a slap on the wrist. It’s totally unacceptable under any circumstance. Even if you think the honor code is totally backwards you would agree that the insanity should be applied evenly to all who agree to it no? If there is was even a single instance where this has happened in a place like a corporation or other professional environment heads would roll for something so terrible.

I don’t want to just sit here and complain about all the things I think are awful about the honor code office. I want to try and offer the bare bones of what a solution would be for them. It’s really rather simple. You need a dramatic culture shift within the honor code office. Remember earlier when I pointed out that The Church preaches forgiveness and mercy through Jesus Christ and his Atonement? The honor code office needs to reflect those teachings, not strive against it.

Students who make honest mistakes should not worry about whether they’ve jeopardized their entire academic career because things got a little hot and heavy with their girlfriend/boyfriend or they let peer pressure get the better of them and had a few drinks. When students feel this way their instinct is going to be to hide from their actions, and this develops a culture of secrecy that can only lead to worse problems.

Students who break the honor code rules should not be immune to consequences for their actions, and I would never suggest that, but those consequences should be structured in a way that reminds these students that even though they’ve fallen down that their school is there to help them back up, not kick them while they’re down. Shaming those who are trying to do good has no place at the Lord’s university. People in need of help should be directed to their church leaders who love and care for them, and if those leaders aren’t able to show that love for them we need to find the leaders that will. The Savior taught with an unending love for all of mankind, sinners and saints alike. If BYU really is his university the people who watch over the students need to go forth with that same love.

I love so many things about BYU, but reading these stories just makes my heart ache and my stomach turn. I hope things get better at the honor code office, I hope they change into an institution that people praise for love and understanding. That’s not up to me though. I’m just one student that believes things can and should be better. Later

Image sourced from BYU, I claim no ownership over it.

New (School) Year, New Me

It’s a new semester for me so I wanted to take a quick moment to look back on my summer in writing to reflect and then perhaps even look a little bit forward to speculate on what I’m hoping to accomplish over the next few months, does that sound good? Not that it even matters if you agree this is just what’s happening. I’m really trying to be polite though.

Ok so if I’m being honest, I actually liked most of the writing I did over the summer, which is kind of surprising because normally I hate everything I write within 2-3 minutes of putting it up. Something about letting the perfectionist part of my brain takes the wheel or something. This summer though I actually did some stuff that I don’t feel like I’ll regret later for how ridiculous it was.

The biggest standout for me was obviously Fiji to Provo…

Ok before I go on I need to say something about that. I hate that title just so so so so so much. Every time I look at that thing I just wish I had named it Suva to Provo. City to City makes so much more sense, and it rolls off the tongue better. Fiji to Provo will forever remain in my mind as the proof that titling essays, posts, articles, etc. are just the absolute worst.

Got that out of my system. Fiji to Provo (REEEEEEE) was a big piece for me. It was the first time I opened up about my mission experience in a public manner, the first time I talked about being depressed, losing my faith, regaining it, just a whole whack of firsts that had been weighing on my mind for so long and suddenly it was out there and there were so much love and support for it… I can’t express how thankful I am for everyone who showed so much love.

Here’s the thing though, once I got that piece out I suddenly felt like I had no idea what the point of this blog was. I had started it way back when with the intent of it being the place I would write this one piece and after I did it was just like, “Well shoot, what am I supposed to do now? It’s done. Does that mean this blog is done as well?” Obviously, that wasn’t the case because I’ve continued to write just a whole swathe of random junk on there, but as I’m sure you noticed there is no clear direction going forward. What is Jonny Talkz? Is it a movie blog? a place for me to put think pieces down? Comedy blog? A stepping stone to true calling as a SoundCloud rapper? A World of Warcraft fan blog? There really isn’t a clear answer and I don’t exactly have an idea for what’s next…

nah I do have an idea for what to do going forward. I wanna write some wack stuff. Not in a way like everything I post is just way too weird or out there for people to enjoy, but get more back to taking some hot takes on stuff so at least a few people look at every post and think

Take for example “I love Jonny” that rap parody I did last week. I know 99% of people who saw that thought to themselves, “Jonny’s been listening to just a bit too much Kanye and he actually thinks he can rap now, wack.” You know what though? Making that thing was the most fun I’ve had with a post in a loooooong time. It was just so silly and fun I couldn’t help but just burst out laughing at the whole idea of it over and over again. It still cracks me up, to be honest. So like that’s the kind of stuff I want to do going forward, not just to make rap videos though, but just do stuff that I think is funny and great while also never taking myself too seriously. I particularity want to apply this idea to doing movie reviews, like I want to just absolutely slam movies I don’t like and shower endless praise on movies I love and I want to do it in a way where you know clearly where I stand with the movie and you feel at least somewhat informed about what to expect if you see it, but like I want it to feel silly as well. I have an idea for this and assuming I find any free time this semester I’ll definitely be doing it, but I already know it’s going to be a timesink so it may be awhile. Outside of that I do want to just write some stuff about like Utah, dating, and other stuff and just really see how far out there I can go before I just lose everyone.

Also esports, HOOO baby do I want to write a lot about esports, but I always hesitate on it because not one soul who regularly reads this understands that world in any way, shape, or form and I feel like I’m throwing something written in a different language at people expecting them to just “get it”. That’s never going to happen, but I’m still going to put those out. Maybe I just won’t share those on my Facebook because they’re really just for me anyways. Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do that.

This piece has pretty much devolved into me thinking in a text file at this point, hasn’t it? Oh well, like I said this is more of the kind of stuff I want to be doing, very informal not academic thinking at all, never appealing to an objective truth, just giving you my take and take some risks. Later

Images sourced from Google

Minor Oddities

It’s summertime in Provo which means that there is a horde of students searching for a place to live in the fall, and up until recently, I was among them. Thankfully I’ve secured an apartment for the upcoming year and won’t have to become homeless. That’s not at all what I wanted to talk about today though, but I needed to give some context for why and how I stumbled on the video I want to talk about.

Spoilers there’s a video I saw and I wanted to talk about it. Here it is.

The actual contents of the video are pretty boring honestly, just a basic ad about what people like about a particular apartment complex. Nothing that special about it, although I think there’s a pretty interesting discussion about why a bunch of guys in the video appreciate attractive women in their apartment and the women say nothing about attractive guys, that’s a whole other thing to unpack so maybe another time yeah?

What I specifically want to talk about is the music in the video. You can go back and give it another listen because I’m sure you didn’t think anything of it while you watched. Does the music sound familiar to you? It does for me.

It’s straight from “Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Just listen for a few seconds, it’s pretty obvious when you compare them side by side.

Now I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong about the apartment video sampling the song, I just think it’s a little odd for a BYU approved apartment complex to be advertising itself using music from an LGBT anthem. (at least that’s what Wikipedia says it is) Particularly given that BYU and the LDS church don’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to LGBT issues.

I don’t think it’s anything for anyone to get upset over, I just kind of found it interesting that they choose to use music from that particular song. I’m almost 100% sure that they just picked this particular melody (is melody the right word for this? I know nothing about music theory) because they thought it sounded nice and wasn’t going to be too intrusive on their video, and honestly who really cares about the background music on a sub-par ad for a single apartment complex? I care, but only enough to notice that it’s there and now that I’ve brought it up I can move on and stop thinking about it forever. Just one of those odd things floating around my head that I needed to get out. Later.

Nostalgic Eating

I need to start this blog post with a disclaimer. The burger place that I ate from for this post was Brigham Young University’s (BYU) own Creamery outlet. I’m not biased towards this establishment because I’m currently enrolled at BYU, rather I’m biased towards it because when I first attended BYU all the way back in Summer/Fall of 2011, I ate there a lot and have quite a few memories attached to the place, and even more memories attached to the burgers I ordered so frequently from there. I would think that aside from my mother’s roasted potatoes (they’re actually the best) and Delissio pizza (Pizza Tuesday for all the OG Magrath folks) the Double Bacon Burger from BYU’s Creamery evokes the most memories and feelings of any food. So at the end of this post when I place this burger on my personal power rankings, maybe just knock it down a spot or two to correct for my even more biased opinion that usual. Let’s get into it.

BYU has four Creamery outlets scattered throughout it’s campus and housing areas. For maximum nostalgia I went to the outlet I used to frequent back in 2011 located right next door to the Cannon Center, the cafeteria essentially. Surrounding the Creamery outlet are the Helamen Halls dormitories which I lived in back when I first left home and ventured out into the world. Stepping through those doors was like revisiting the past. Feelings of exhilaration, stress, fear, joy, and frustration flooded through my brain as I recalled what it was like when I was just nineteen years years old and desperately trying to figure out where I fit in the world of university life and the world at large. (I’m closer now, but still haven’t fully answered these questions.)

Most of it hadn’t changed through the last several years. I still followed the same routine I did back in 2011. I order my burger, take a seat and begin by watching the fry cook lay my patties and bacon on the grill, it’s still really satisfying to this day to watch your burger being cooked right in front of your eyes. Once the cook has made the flip on my patty I allow myself a moment of just being a guy and shamelessly check out the cute girl making milkshakes for someone else. Some things just can’t be helped. To be fair to myself I’m actually somewhat aware of how long I can check her out before it gets weird. (Anything longer than like 2 seconds is weird imo.) Despite that I still have a brief internal debate about whether or not checking her out makes me shallow. I decided that it wasn’t since I don’t believe there is anything wrong with appreciating beautiful things, just so long as you don’t give priority or favors to people just because they’re good looking.

Finally my burger is off the grill and I get to watch as all the condiments are placed on and the final product is wrapped up and placed in a plain brown paper bag and passed to me over the counter. I never eat the burger there, instead I get back in my car and drive home where I can viciously consume my burger without fear of judgement from others. The burger order itself hasn’t changed since 2011. Two patties with two strips of bacon combined with lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, bbq sauce, mayo all crammed in a plain white bun to ensure the whole thing is an absolute mess to try and consume.

There were a couple of subtle differences though, instead of using my student I.D. linked to a meal plan my mother payed for I used cash, and as I waited for my burger I listened to Frank Sinatra, an artist I wouldn’t have touched with a twenty-foot pole when I was nineteen and just discovering hip-hop and rap for myself.

Once I’m home it only takes seconds to unwrap and dig in to my burger. That first bite is almost euphoric. I can feel all of my stress and worries dissolve away as the flood of nostalgia pours into my brain. This burger was my primary way of dealing with stress when I first left home and it did a fantastic job at that.

Then the rose-tinted glasses fell off.

Something’s not quite right. Its dry. Like really dry. What’s going on? There are burger juices running down my fingers, there’s sauce for days on this thing, even if the patty was a bit dry I shouldn’t be noticing it this much. I am though. The actual burger is really really dry. Was it always this way and I just didn’t have the palette before to notice this problem? I don’t know, and frankly it doesn’t matter. The burger could’ve been a piece of heaven itself before and it wouldn’t change what it is now. That is a burger that did everything except one thing right, but the part they screwed up has had an effect on the whole thing. This is super disappointing because the everything else in the burger really felt like it was going right, it’s nice and messy, none of the sauces are overpowering the other, the bacon is nice and fatty, they even got it right by only putting one slice of tomato on!

Gah, this sucks. The woefully dry patty is actually dragging the whole burger down to Davy Jones locker with it. I expected to be putting this burger near the top of my list due almost entirely to it’s nostalgic value to me. Instead I’m stretching myself just trying to justify it as a middle of the pack competitor. Regardless, that’s where the Double Bacon Burger from BYU’s Creamery sits. Just below average. Thanks for reading, peace out and make some good choices y’all..

Provo Burger Power Rankings August 9th, 2017 Edition:

Tommy’s Burgers Double Cheeseburger with Chili.
Cubby’s Gypsy Burger
Burger Supreme’s Golden Burger
Five Guys Double Bacon Burger
Classic Smash from Smashburger
McDonald’s Big Mac
Double-Double from In-N-Out
Double Bacon Burger from BYU Creamery
Pastrami Burger from JCW’s
California Classic from Carl’s Junior
BBQ Bacon Burger from CHOM

Quick Catchup

So I’ve been living in the United States for a couple of weeks now. I gotta say, it is more different that I initially thought it would be. Maybe its because I never really sat down and thought about what it was going to be like when I got here, I just sorta knew this is where I needed to be and went for it. Now that I am here though I gotta say it is fantastic.

This really says a lot about what a lazy chump I can be, but I still can’t get over how much better the fast food is here. In absolutely every way the US beats Canada in this category, it monumentally cheaper, (Like 50-60% of what I would pay in Canada.) the staff are friendlier and more actually listen to customer orders, (If I had a dollar for every time I asked for no onions and got onions on a burger I’d have a considerable fortune.) and there is so much more variety if places to eat. Take for instance Zupa’s, a casual cafe that serves soups, salads, and sandwiches. It’s quick, tasty, reasonably priced and unlike any fast food in Canada I actually feel good about what I’m eating there. I can’t think of a single place in Canada that is like that. How does that not exist? Does it and I’m just totally ignorant? It’s just insane to me.

I guess I should at least briefly mention my schooling since that was the real purpose of why I came down here, even though my friends all speculate jokingly ( I think) that it was for me to get married. BYU is such a fantastic school. Maybe I’ll be more jaded about it after some mid terms but right now I’m in a honeymoon period of sorts and it’s awesome. My personal favorite course is my introduction to film studies (TMA 102) because I feel like I already get a lot out of movies, but there is so much more that even just this one course will allow me to get from film.

This doesn’t reflect super well on me, but what the heck I’ll just say it. There is such an over abundance of fine looking girls here it’s a little bit overwhelming. What a glorious problem to have.

That’s all I got for now, I have as couple of other stories but I’m going to be selfish and just make them into separate posts so I can make myself feel like I’m posting here again regularly. Peace out!